Helen T. Parsons

Helen Tracy Parsons (March 26, 1886 – December 30, 1977) was an American biochemist and nutritionist chiefly known for her early work in vitamin B. Parsons developed an interest in biochemistry and nutrition at the University of Wisconsin-Madision, where she was a graduate student under Elmer McCollum. Parsons spent most of her own scientific career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in their Home Economics department. After her retirement, she was named a fellow of the American Institute of Nutrition (AIN) in 1959, one of only three women to be so honored. Parsons is well known for her early work on eggs, which was critical to the discovery of biotin and avidin in 1940. Her later work on thiamine depletion by live yeast was crucial in helping to stop the sale of raw yeast cocktails as a nutritional supplement.

Early life and education Helen Tracy Parsons was born on March 26, 1886, in Arkansas City, Kansas. Her father was a physician who came from a pioneer family in Indiana and her mother was born at a mission house to Mohegan Native Americans in New England. Both her mother's and father's family believed in education and encouraged scholarly thinking for her and her sister.

At five years old Parsons began attending the second ward school in Arkansas City, where her aunt was the principal. She moved with her aunt and uncle to Alabama, where she attended a co-ed military high school. Parsons returned to Arkansas City at age sixteen to teach at a country school. After several years of teaching, Parsons left the school to attend summer session at a teachers’ college in Pittsburg, Kansas. It was here that she was first introduced to the budding field of home economics and decided to enroll at Kansas State Agricultural College in 1911. While in college, Parsons was introduced to chemistry and physiology through home economics classes. She described the "enriching [combination] of home economics with science" as "a very potent thing" and switched from wanting to become a Latin teacher to wanting to pursue both home economics and science.

In 1917, McCollum moved to head the biochemistry department at the newly established Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, where Parsons chose to follow. Working in McCollum's lab, Parsons had access to the nation's first colony of white rats for use in nutrition experiments. At Johns Hopkins, Parsons worked with McCollum on many topics pertaining to vitamins, and published her own early study on vitamin C metabolism in rats. At the time, vitamin C had not yet been isolated or chemically identified. After three years at Johns Hopkins, Parsons was offered a faculty position as an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and she returned to the department of Home Economics in 1920. She would take these results back with her to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and continue her research on what she termed “egg white injury” in her own lab. Her work on this topic later proved crucial in helping to identify biotin and avidin. Parsons’ graduated with her doctoral degree from Yale in 1928 at the age of 42, after which she returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an associate professor.

Parsons and her group then went on to look for foods that could counteract the symptoms of egg-white injury. They found that foods like cooked kidney, cooked liver, yeast, egg yolk, or dried milk contained a 'protective factor' (later found to be biotin) that cured the rats dermatitis and prevented the debilitating effects of egg-white consumption. They went on to partially purify the factor and showed that the amount needed to cure symptoms was proportional to the amount of egg-white fed. Although ultimately unable to chemically identify the protective factor, Parsons' early work on the subject was crucial to the later identification of biotin by Paul Gyorgy in 1940. In a 1959 letter to Parsons, Gyorgy wrote: "It was you, my dear Doctor Parsons, who gave me the best stimulus to unravel the difficult problem of egg-white toxicity and biotin deficiency. Your excellent and classical experiments on the identification of bound biotin in the feces of rats fed raw egg-white opened the way to solve the puzzle of egg-white toxicity. I am still grateful to you for giving us the light to see the things in proper perspective."

Although the yeast company she was working for was not happy with the results, they allowed Parsons to publish her findings. Some of her colleagues were not as fortunate - in her oral history Parsons recalls some of their research being suppressed by the larger yeast companies and their papers cancelled for publication. and in 1959, was one of three women to be named a fellow of the society. Parsons never married and had no children. She was an avid gardener and during her retirement, became a member of many community gardening clubs. Parsons died on December 30, 1977, at her home in Madison, Wisconsin at the age of 91.